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SpaceX Awarded First Military Contract

An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports that commercial space company SpaceX has gotten its first launch contracts from a military organization. The United States Air Force has hired SpaceX to launch the NASA DSCOVR satellite aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, and several other satellites aboard a Falcon Heavy. (The Heavy isn't finished yet, and SpaceX currently has no place to launch it, but the contract gives them three years to do so.) 'According to the mission requirements, the Falcon Heavy must carry its payload up to an orbit of 720 km and deploy a COSMIC-2 weather- and atmospheric-monitoring satellite, up to six auxiliary payloads (probably microsats), and up to eight P-POD CubeSat deployers. The rocket should then restart and continue all the way up to a 6,000 x 12,000 km orbit and deploy the ballast, more science experiments and more microsats.'"

2 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Re:NASA by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 4, Informative

    Weird example for you to pick. Health care is the one area where you do have clear examples of the superiority of government run systems. Such as countries with government health care having half the costs per person as US health care. Such as government programs even in the US being more efficient/effective healthcare than rival private systems.

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    Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
  2. Re:NASA by radtea · · Score: 4, Informative
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    Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.